Tag Archives: Christian privilege

Failed Presidential candidate Gary Bauer complains about Christian privilege

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One of the most ridiculous stories that comes up when talking about separation of church and state is the constant complaints of Christian persecution from right wingers. Gary Bauer, president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families and a failed US Presidential candidate, tries hard to claim that Christians are hurt more than Muslims in this country.

If Muslims were treated like Christians, Muslims would be mocked by late night TV talk show hosts and lampooned in crude cartoon parodies. If Christians were treated like Muslims, conspicuous Christianity would be celebrated by our elites as a sign of our diversity and open-mindedness, not disparaged as an embarrassment, a nuisance and a breach of the law.

If Christianity were treated like Islam, our students would be taught a white-washed version of Christian history, with the troubling bits miscast or omitted from textbooks and lesson plans.

If Christians Were Treated Like Muslims

As the Daily Kos points out Bauer is leaving some facts out:

It goes on and on and on. But wait, what if Christians were treated like Muslims?

Christians would be racially profiled at public places and transportation hubs. Christians wouldn’t be allowed to build churches wherever they pleased. Christians wouldn’t be allowed to wear their traditional garb without mocking and angry looks. Christians wouldn’t be allowed to say the word “Jesus” without triggering alarm bells at the NSA. Christians wouldn’t be allowed to go to church without having their property vandalized, and even being physically attacked. Christians would be the villain in every action thriller. Christians wouldn’t be able to run for office without having bigots accuse them of being in league with terrorists.

I could also go on and on and on.

You know who really gets screwed? Atheists. Discuss.

Midday open thread

Bauer and those who whine about Christian persecution are just that – cry babies over Christian privilege. It’s laughable because if there is any so-called “persecution” it pales to other countries like where majority religious dissenters actually die or are put in prison.

Like in Iraq:

A doorbell rings, a new attack on Iraqi Christians

If Rep Peter King wants to examine extremism then he needs to look at all of it

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I think if the new Congress holds hearings on the ‘Radicalization’ Of American Muslims then they also need to include the radicalization of so-called Patriots like Jim David Adkisson, Byron Williams, Scott Roeder, and Richard Poplawski among others.

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) is planning to hold hearings on the “radicalization” of American Muslims when he takes over the chair of the Homeland Security Committee next year, the New York Times reports.

King, who denies being anti-Muslim, has nonetheless repeatedly cast suspicion on American Muslims as a whole since the 2001 terrorist attacks. He has helped mainstream the idea that 80 percent of mosques in America are led by radical clerics. The statistic has been cited over and over by those who believe American Muslims are raging a “stealth jihad.” He has called on Attorney General Eric Holder to resign, saying Holder isn’t sufficiently aware that “our enemy today is radical Islam.”

House GOP To Hold Hearings On ‘Radicalization’ Of American Muslims

I think we shouldn’t limit the hearings just to Muslim extremists but we should include all home grown radicals who promote or act out violence to further their causes. As Paul Krugman wrote in 2009:

Back in April, there was a huge fuss over an internal report by the Department of Homeland Security warning that current conditions resemble those in the early 1990s — a time marked by an upsurge of right-wing extremism that culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing.

Conservatives were outraged. The chairman of the Republican National Committee denounced the report as an attempt to “segment out conservatives in this country who have a different philosophy or view from this administration” and label them as terrorists.

But with the murder of Dr. George Tiller by an anti-abortion fanatic, closely followed by a shooting by a white supremacist at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the analysis looks prescient.

What will the consequences be? Nobody knows, of course, although the analysts at Homeland Security fretted that things may turn out even worse than in the 1990s — that thanks, in part, to the election of an African-American president, “the threat posed by lone wolves and small terrorist cells is more pronounced than in past years.”

And that’s a threat to take seriously. Yes, the worst terrorist attack in our history was perpetrated by a foreign conspiracy. But the second worst, the Oklahoma City bombing, was perpetrated by an all-American lunatic. Politicians and media organizations wind up such people at their, and our, peril.

The Big Hate

Additional information of the extreme Christian group Family Research Council being labeled a hate group.

“Christmas with a Capital C” is porn for Bill O’Reilly

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This is a trailer for an actual movie called “Christmas with a Capital C” that stars Ted McGinley and Daniel Baldwin. Baldwin is the bad nasty atheist trying to “steal” Christmas from a town that violates the 1st amendment by putting up a creche on city property. Amazes me that people protecting their civil rights are seen as the bad guys

Christmas with a Capital C


(H/T vjack via twitter)

There is just so much wrong with the scenes in the trailer. This is porn for the likes of Fox “News” Bill O’Reilly.

Good thing is according to the IMDB it is going straight to DVD on
November 2nd.

US Supreme Court rules cross generic

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Last week the US Supreme Court ruled that a transfer of land, holding a cross erected in the Mojave National Preserve in California then sold to a private group after a lower court ruled that the cross violated the 1st amendment, needed to be reassessed in light of their holding that a Latin cross is a generic symbol of war dead. The ruling opens a can of worms that neither believers or non-believers might enjoy.

On April 28th, the US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Salazar v. Buono that a lower court ruling on a law enacted by Congress to transfer 1 acre of land under a Latin cross to a private group should be reconsidered.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority:

“A Latin cross is not merely a reaffirmation of Christian beliefs. It evokes thousands of small crosses in foreign fields marking the graves of Americans who fell in battles, battles whose tragedies would be compounded if the fallen are forgotten.”

Salazar v. Buono

When the case was heard back in October 2009, the following exchange took place:

Peter J. Eliasberg, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, said many Jewish war veterans would not want to be honored by “the predominant symbol of Christianity,” one that “signifies that Jesus is the son of God and died to redeem mankind for our sins.”

Justice Antonin Scalia responded that the symbol in the context of a war memorial carried a more general meaning. “The cross is the most common symbol of the resting place of the dead,” he said.

Mr. Eliasberg said, “There is never a cross on the tombstone of a Jew.”

Justice Scalia, who is usually jovial even in disagreement, turned angry. “I don’t think you can leap from that to the conclusion that the only war dead that the cross honors are the Christian war dead,” he said. “I think that’s an outrageous conclusion.”

Justices’ Ruling Blocks Cross Removal

So basically the court set aside the lower court ruling, that the land transfer was an attempt to evade the 1st amendment issue, because the Latin cross was a generic war memorial.

Kennedy wrote again:

“It could not maintain the cross without violating the injunction,” he wrote, “but it could not remove the cross without conveying disrespect for those the cross was seen as honoring.”

He added, “The land transfer-statute embodies Congress’s legislative judgment that this dispute is best resolved through a framework and policy of accommodation for a symbol that, while challenged under the Establishment Clause has complex meaning beyond the expression of religious views.”

This illustrates how Christian privilege can blind a person into a bad decision. The majority of the court assumed that the cross was a secular symbol of war dead and not the sectarian symbol everyone else sees. The Latin cross simply does NOT include everyone.

Justice Stevens wrote in his dissent:

“Making a plain, unadorned Latin cross a war memorial does not make the cross secular,” he added. “It makes the war memorial sectarian.”

Making the cross secular also bothers some religious folks:

“I think that most American evangelicals would acknowledge that it probably is, in our culture, more than a Christian symbol,” said Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.

That’s fine, he said, “as long as it’s not less than a Christian symbol.”

Land said he’d rather have the cross stay up under Kennedy’s line of argument than have authorities eradicate crosses from cemeteries.

When a Supreme Court justice says the cross is not just about Christianity, it diminishes Jesus’ charge to his followers to “take up their cross and follow me,” said Read Churchyard, an expert on symbolism and iconography at Wheaton College in Illinois.

Is Supreme Court’s Cross Ruling Good For Christians?

The fact is that the court rulings on crosses isn’t an attempt to “have authorities eradicate crosses from cemeteries”. It is to protect the 1st amendment and keep the government from favoring a particular sect when building a memorial to a group of people like war veterans. No one has ever complained about what individual families use to mark their dead in a public cemetery.

Ignoring the fact that not all people are Christian is as disrespectful as erecting a Nativity scene on the lawn of City Hall during holiday season.

Skye Jethani teaches us how to marginalize minorities

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Skye Jethani is an ordained pastor and author who wrote a recent article on Huffington Post titled “What Evangelicals and Atheists Have in Common” that shows us how a Christian apologist can marginalize atheists or other religious minorities and frame a “concern” into a positive spin about one’s own religion.

Jethani gets right to the point:

For example, some within New Atheism are proselytizing their beliefs with the fervor, and in come cases anger, more often associated with evangelicals. From an international ad campaign on buses dismissing belief in God, to rallies at universities inviting students to exchange their Bibles for pornography, atheists are no longer content with a live-and-let-live approach to those adhering to religion. Instead, they are actively trying to convert (or is the word un-convert?) the masses.

What Evangelicals and Atheists Have in Common

He forwards a false notion that atheists not remaining the submissive quiet doormats he is use to is some how “new”. He also believes that atheists speaking out and using some of the same techniques that Christian believers use to advance their religion is some how against our atheist beliefs.

Christians like Skye Jethani typically miss the forest for the trees and that is understandable when one is in the dominate religion in the country. It is much like how many white men never seem to understand how their male privilege hurts women and other minorities in society. When one is on “top” it is hard to see or understand those under you.

To me Jethani’s remarks are just like if he had said “look at those black people using advertising and publicity stunts to get noticed. Who do they think they are?”

In another part of his essay he complains about Christopher Hitchens’ fiery comments about religion – which again isn’t new. Jethani tries again to draw a false parallel with loud mouth evangelicals:

Shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, one evangelical leader made the following statement, for which he subsequently apologized:

I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say, “You helped this happen.”

Sadly, these kinds of judgments are not uncommon. Other church leaders made similar remarks after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and following the earthquake in Haiti. Presumably, according to the logic within these proclamations, the way to prevent terrorist attacks and natural disasters in one’s country is by earning the Almighty’s affection and protection through moral behavior, adherence to prayer, traditional family values, and frequent worship.

While I applaud the effort to acknowledge that some on his side are butt-heads, notice how Jethani doesn’t NAME the person who said any of the nasty things he complains about? He is quick to point the finger at Hitchens and Richard Dawkins but when it comes to naming those on the evangelical side Jethani is mum.

Any atheist who is worth their salt KNOWS who said the quote Jethani mentions and not naming the guy is an effort – as happens most often when direct names aren’t used – to minimize what was said.

What really is new about these so-called “New Atheists” is we are finally tired of the expectation that we remain silent and deferential to Christian privilege. It isn’t harming Christians to point out their privilege and we get tired of their constant whining about being a victim.

If and when people like Skye Jethani start calling out their brothers and sisters and stop rationalizing their privilege then maybe we atheists won’t seem so loud and hurtful to them.